


i've been running now so long i'm scared

by dustyveins



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes-centric, Depression, Gen, Introspection, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve only shows up in memories in this one, yes the vast majority of my writing is solitary rumination what of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-01 07:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20811353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustyveins/pseuds/dustyveins
Summary: Bucky wakes up and wishes he didn't.





	i've been running now so long i'm scared

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline for this is ambiguous. Is this the morning that Bucky goes to the market and everything goes to shit? Maybe, maybe not. I don't have an answer for you: death of the author, baby, it's up to you.
> 
> Thanks, [Kyra](https://twitter.com/deviiscrime) for sending me [The Way I Tend to Be by Frank Turner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf5O2M5GaEA) and ruining me.

Bucky wakes up and wishes he didn't. It happens like that most days, if he's honest, which he is trying to be. He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. He doesn't groan out loud but he thinks he might feel better if he did.

He can hear the birds outside his window, can see the sunlight streaming through, and he wishes for duller days. In all those books he used to read the weather would cooperate with the protagonist, but his life never plays out that way. He isn't the protagonist of his own story; he thinks that maybe it's Steve.

He's got to drag himself out of bed, he's got to go out to the market and buy food, he's got to spend the day remembering like he spends every day remembering or at the very least trying. He thinks this is the worst kind of existence: being stuck. Having nothing left that is solely his and not even fully remembering what that was like. Not remembering if he ever had anything that was solely his or if he gave everything to Steve. Every bit of himself given away.

Some days he wakes up and it's 1934 and some days he wakes up and 1967 and some days he wakes up and it's 2016. It's disorienting, to be so many different people all at once. To have so many versions of himself locked inside one body. Like a glitch, like a projection with an offset overlay, blurred at the edges and not quite lined up.

He reaches blindly for the notebook on his end table, flesh fingers on soft leather, and he pulls it to himself. He's got pages bookmarked, the important stuff, the stuff that makes his brain feel less fuzzy, the things that break through and feel more familiar. The things that make him feel human again.

All of it is Steve: his birthday and his mothers name and all the other things in museums and history books.

All of it is Steve: his real birthday and the newspapers in his shoes and the way he coughed so hard all the way through the December of '34 that Bucky was bracing himself for the worst while keeping a brave face on the whole time. The way it felt to hold him, small and shivering, like a baby bird. All the things in Bucky's own brain coming back for a moment or forever; he doesn't know so he writes it all down.

Everything he learns or remembers goes in the book for safe keeping. The pages are soft from flipping through it.

He flips open to a page halfway through, a page from a good memory day. He doesn't have it marked because it scares him but he can't help but read it again and again and again even so.

The memory is shaky now but he remembers how vivid it was when he wrote it down. He hates this trick of his brain, the way it grants him things and then takes them away again.

The page tells him it was November of '41. Steve was sleeping off another bout of flu, curled up in Bucky's bed for the warmth of it but mostly so Bucky could keep an eye on him while he slept. He had just been drafted, but he didn't know how to tell Steve yet. He hid his notice and he didn't cry. He cried that night, Steve curled up small and gentle next to him. Steve slept like the dead back then, half deaf and constantly exhausted as he was. Bucky had leaned in close and whispered "I love you" into his hair over and over until the words started to lose their shape. Steve smelled like Drene and a little bit like smoke. Silently, Bucky wondered what cruel God would give him Steve but only halfway. What cruel God would not let Bucky keep him. When he woke up the next day, Steve seemed better. Bucky told him he had enlisted.

He flips the page and on the back he's written failed missions that felt related. The mission in '72 where the target used Drene. The apartment he broke into in '86 with the photograph on the dresser of the target and another man, posed in a way that felt familiar in a painful way. The bridge. Pulling Steve out of the river and staying to see if he was breathing.

It all circles back to Steve whether he knew it at the time or not. He doesn't remember today, but maybe he will tomorrow. It's another day. The birds are singing outside and it's familiar. Another memory for the book: waking up in the spring of '39 in a pile of couch cushions on the floor. The birds were chirping and Steve was still asleep. Bucky had smiled.

Back in 2016, Bucky doesn't smile, but he feels like he might. One of these days, maybe. When it stops hurting so much. When he remembers for a little longer, maybe. And maybe he'll see Steve again. He wonders if he still smells the same and doubts it.

He closes the book and gets out of bed and goes to the market.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/_sneganno) or [tumblr](https://sourbottlebaby.tumblr.com) and chat with me about marvel and/or longing.


End file.
